Elsevier has released its own AI tool – LeapSpace, a fee-based product officially launched by the Dutch company last month, uses a large language model (LLM) to scan the papers to answer users’ questions.

The LeapSpace can access articles from Elsevier’s own collection and those of its four partners: Emerald, the Institute of Physics, the New England Journal of Medicine Group, and Sage Publications. (It pays its partners a royalty per use, and the tool gives their articles more exposure.) Elsevier has promised that the analytical reports will not favor citations to its own content, and that users’ queries will be kept private and not used to train the proprietary LLMs, from the OpenAI group, that support LeapSpace.

But the release of LeapSpace and similar tools adds to a long-standing debate about who controls access to scientific knowledge and how much it costs to gain access. Some publishing industry specialists say LeapSpace’s approach, in which users must pay to analyze just a subset of the scientific literature, is unsatisfying.

Source https://www.science.org/content/article/journal-giant-elsevier-unveiled-ai-tool-scans-millions-paywalled-papers-it-worth-it

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